Oliver Darcy, CNN’s ‘Reliable Sources’ critic, is leaving

Oliver Darcy, the author of CNN’s influential newsletter ‘Reliable Sources’, has released the Warner Bros. Discovery-backed outlet is leaving, leaving the direction of the company’s media industry franchise in doubt.

A new newsletter from Darcy, called ‘Status’, landed in email inboxes on Thursday morning.

“Drawn from a deep pool of purchasing and industry expertise, ‘Status’ delivers hard-hitting reporting and unflinching analysis on the Fourth Estate, Hollywood and Silicon Valley,” Darcy wrote in an email delivered via the Beehive -platform. sugar-coating, no hard knocks, no sparing of delicate egos – just the unvarnished truth about the companies and individuals shaping our world.” He said the newsletter would be published Sunday through Thursday.

Neither CNN nor Darcy immediately responded to a request for comment, but a person familiar with the matter said the journalist had left the news network and indicated that next steps for “Reliable Sources” were not immediately clear.

“Reliable Sources” was once one of CNN’s flagship programs, a program that ran on Sunday mornings for 30 years and took a critical look at the media’s handling of issues, mostly related to the Washington news cycle. Bernard Kalb initially anchored the program, then Howard Kurtz. In 2013, CNN hired Brian Stelter, an enterprising media reporter who covered a blog he created examining the TV news industry for a media beat job at the New York Times, to run the show. Stelter launched a newsletter during Jeff Zucker’s tenure that became a must-read for media pundits.

However, CNN parted ways with Stelter after the TV show was canceled in 2022 — ostensibly in an effort to quell an aggressive attitude that grew at CNN under Zucker’s auspices and that executives at the Parnet company lean as left-leaning. Darcy, who had come on board to work on the newsletter and media coverage, was tasked with keeping the newsletter moving.

Darcy’s latest newsletter ‘Reliable Sources’, published on Wednesday evening, made no reference to his departure. But the main item of the day was a look at disastrous results at CNN’s parent company, Warner Bros. Discovery, which on Wednesday reported a $9.1 billion writedown on the value of its TV networks. “David Zaslav had a particularly rough day,” Darcy wrote in the opening of the newsletter.